This invention relates to advanced audience targeting systems for the advertising and direct marketing industries. More particularly, this invention relates to a unique process of directing different commercial messages, advertisements and programming to different demographically and selectively targeted television audiences by relating carrier subscriber data to other proprietary marketing databases. Still more particularly, this invention relates to the interests of the cable television and the newly emerging telecommunications industries that are involved in creating an electronic highway for video, voice and data, and in providing for a new common carrier that is superior to existing telephone, postal carrier and traditional broadcast networks in terms of forging one-to-one relationships between advertisers and customers, allowing interactive communications between advertisers and consumers, and efficiently integrating marketing tactics within a single new medium. In addition, this invention relates to the provision of proprietary security mechanisms to facilitate communication with carrier subscribers, which communication is restricted both by government policy (federal and local) and by consumer advocacy pressure aimed at protecting subscriber privacy, as well as by the carriers' own insistence on safeguarding their commercially valuable subscriber lists.
Currently, the cable television infrastructure is composed of geographically scattered and unconnected individual cable systems. This system makes it difficult for advertisers and direct marketers to plan and execute marketing using this infrastructure on a regional or national basis. In addition, the level of targeting available in cable television today is only modestly superior to the level of targeting produced by traditional national television networks. However, rapidly changing technology is transforming the cable television industry from a group of passive, one-way, geographically-separate entertainment distribution systems into an interconnected grid of interactive communications networks. When this process is complete, traditional multi-system cable operators ("MSOs") and other telecommunication carrier companies will be able to offer to companies that market products and services unparalleled opportunities to target prime audience prospects more efficiently and to deliver their sales messages, advertisements and sponsored programming directly to those prospects that are the natural targets for the products and services of those companies. Such precision targeting cannot be fully exploited, however, until new technologies and mechanisms for cable system signal switching, addressability and interactivity are in place, first requiring substantial upgrading and rebuilding of the hardware infrastructure.
The present invention will supplement this rebuilding effort with new information management techniques and services. These new information management techniques and services, which currently do not exist within the cable television infrastructure, are essential to allowing the level of advanced audience targeting desired by advertisers, cable television and other telecommunications industries. By providing these new techniques and services, the present invention will enable MSOs, telemarketing companies, advertisers, programmers and direct marketers to perform such functions as: (1) identification of all customers regardless of carrier system affiliation in order to facilitate the aggregation of customer data across multiple cable systems and preferred audience targeting; (2) matching of marketing databases or audience profiles (demographics, lifestyle and viewing behavior) with appropriately targeted subscriber addresses; (3) addressing of specific commercials, advertising campaigns or programming directly to specific households; (4) forwarding of specific customer requests directly to the appropriate advertisers and direct marketers; and (5) accomplishing all the above while both protecting customer privacy and safeguarding the proprietary subscriber records and other marketing databases involved in these processes.
It is one object of the present invention to solve the problems inherent in the ability of advertisers and direct marketers to uniformly reach selected groups of scattered subscriber households within disjointed and unconnected cable systems and to thereby greatly facilitate their use as new, national micromarketing tools. It is another object of this invention, to ensure that, over time, full service networks of voice, video and data can function together as a new common carrier for advertising and direct marketing in a manner superior to that of the existing telephone, postal carrier and traditional broadcast networks. It is a further object of this invention to make possible for the cable industry a substantial increase in its share of advertising and direct marketing by providing services and techniques that facilitate greatly expanded sales revenue for cable system operators at all levels. Similarly, it is yet a further object of this invention to provide similar services to ensure that other telecommunications companies involved in building "the information highway" are able to maximize new advertising and direct marketing revenue.